symbols, imagery, and sightings

Library: a sign of class

“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library”(Fitzgerald, 42)

Large parties: a display of wealth and success

"The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names." (Fitzgerald, 44)

Gossip and Rumour: shows dishonest, shallow, untrustworthy, a representation of the general society during this time. Nick doesn't make rumour and thats why he consider himself a honest person.

"The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially... A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly... It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world." (Fitzgerald, 48)

East Egg vs. West Egg: contrast of new money and old money, meaning the people who got inherited money from its family versus the people that worked hard and made themselves rich from a previously poor citizen

"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people - his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God...and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented...Jay Gatsby...and to this conception he was faithful to the end." (Fitzgerald, 99)

Yellow colour: in many facets of the book mainly representing corruption

"Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets....I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without." (Fitzgerald, 36)

Green colour: symbolizes money, growth, and future

"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay....You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." (Fitzgerald, 94)